Derek Bell

By H.A. Branham

Great sports car synergy, that’s what was happening in the 1980s involving Englishman Derek Bell and the International Motor Sports Association’s (IMSA) Grand Touring Prototype (GTP) class. The kind of synergy that further defined the driver – and the sanctioning body.

Bell’s career was peaking in the ‘80s, as was IMSA’s popularity. And you better believe the two were inextricably linked, facilitated by the cars he drove to most of his 20 IMSA victories, Porsche 962s.

The 962 is one of the cars in the IMSA Hall of Fame. Bell – a racing rock star who actually looked stage-worthy – is one of the most recognizable 962 drivers in IMSA history and mainly linked with the Lowenbrau Porsche 962, the blue-and-white 200-plus mph beast he co-drove with the late Al Holbert, also a hall of fame inductee.

Bell grew up on his family’s farm in Sussex, only a few miles from the famed Goodwood track. Bell got rather good driving a tractor, good enough to know he didn’t want to keep driving a tractor all his life.

Bell won 53 races overall in his career including five victories at the sports car summit – the 24 Hours of Le Mans (1975, ’81-82, 86-87). He captured the World Endurance Championship (1985) and World Sports Car Championship (1986) The highlight of his IMSA days: three Rolex 24 At Daytona championships (1986, ’87, ’89).

Before we proceed, we must get his name right. Since 1986, it’s been Derek Reginald Bell MBE, as in Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. Bell was honored for his contributions to motorsports. Wonder if his 1970 work with Steve McQueen, driving race cars in footage for the film “Le Mans,” counted?

If Bell was not in the IMSA Hall of Fame, something would be amiss. He previously has been inducted into the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America in 2012, the Le Mans 24 Hours Drivers Hall of Fame in 2013 and the Motor Sport Hall of Fame UK in 2016.

“I wish I could pinpoint what has made me such an effective long-distance driver,” Bell wrote in his 1988 autobiography “My Racing Life.”

“I was never taught by anybody how to pace myself, [but] I don’t ever remember having any particular problems coming to terms with endurance racing techniques. And, I suppose, I’ve been fortunate that I have raced with so many compatible drivers.”

Substitute the term “championship-caliber” for compatible and you’ll get the picture. Bell drove 45 races with Holbert, 42 with Hans Stuck, 27 with Gianpiero Moretti and 19 with the other-worldly Jacky Ickx.

Bell’s three Rolex 24 championship efforts were all super-team material. In 1986 he and Holbert teamed with IndyCar star Al Unser Jr.; in ’87 those three gents were joined by new hot-shoe Chip Robinson; and in ’89, Bell, Bob Wollek and John Andretti won North America’s greatest sports car race.

The ’89 event was special. Car owner Jim Busby fielded a five-year-old Porsche 962, by that time considered a somewhat outdated warhorse. Nissans were the hot ticket in the GTP class, having won nine races in ’88. A Porsche 962, a rare underdog at Daytona, had pulled a huge upset on the high banks.

For one the world greatest endurance racers, a weird twist: Aside from the Rolex 24 triumphs, Bell’s signature IMSA victory may have been in the Miami Grand Prix street circuit race, in 1985 – the antithesis of a 24-hour battle. Bell lost the lead to Darin Brassfield a half-hour from the finish of the three-hour sprint, Bell got the Lowenbrau car back up front for good with a deft pass of Brassfield’s Chevrolet March prototype in a tight, almost-hairpin of a turn.

Said Bell: “I pushed him to the outside. I knew I was right there, and I came inside of him [for the pass].”

Lamented Brassfield: “I knew he was going to come back.”

Bell considers himself fortunate to have raced in IMSA when he did. “I hate to sound like an old man,” he said several years ago, “but the ‘80s and early 90s was a phenomenal era of sports car racing over in Europe and in America. It was massive. … I think the era that I was in, I wouldn't have missed for the world.”